05 Stand and Deliver
by Thescarredman
Summary: Anna wants to take her friendship with Jack to the next level. How does poor Jack explain the facts of life to a humanoid robot programmed to mimic human behavior? Especially one who won't take 'no' for an answer?
1. The Birds and the Bees

March 2006  
La Jolla

Anna," Lynch said, his breath suddenly short, "are you _coming on _to me?"

Behind him, he felt her fingers pause, still twined in his hair. "Well, if you're not sure, I must not be doing it right." He felt her lips brush the back of his neck, her breath warm. "Or am I?"

The evening at home had started normally enough: another late night arrival, followed by a short report from Anna on the family's day at home while he took a light meal in the kitchen. If his day had been rough enough to make sleep difficult, he'd spend an hour or so sitting on the couch in the living room, sorting things out - rather than stare at the ceiling above his bed, sometimes with a glass of bourbon for company. A couple of months ago, Anna had begun massaging his neck and shoulders when she found him sitting slumped on the couch. Like anything she set out to learn, she had soon become expert at it. Lately, those massages were a lot more appealing than bourbon.

Tonight, though, after ten minutes of kneading, unlocking muscles he hadn't known were tense, leaving him ready to groan with release, the pressure in her fingers on his neck had slacked way off, becoming more like caresses than massage. Then one hand had slipped gently around, resting on his collarbone, and the other had drifted up as her fingers combed slowly through his hair.

"Anna, uh, you know, sometimes when you try out one of your little experiments, you should run it by the rest of us first, or at least give us a heads-up." He struggled to keep his voice even. "I know you're just trying to stretch your mimicry program, trying out different human behaviors and such. But what you're doing now isn't like that week you "came down" with all those diseases, or that day you spent singing to the radio off-key. I really don't feel comfortable playing along with this."

"This isn't an exercise, Jack." Her other hand slid off his head and around his neck. Every hair on his neck stood up as her lips brushed his ear. "I've been thinking a lot about our relationship."

He tried a different tack. "It's generally a bad idea to get … involved with someone you work for-"

Her hand covered his mouth, the fingers pressing gently but firmly. He was very aware of her arms around his neck, the tiny hands that could twist his head off his shoulders like he was a cheap doll.

"Oh, just shut up a minute, will you? Just for a minute. I'm not really your employee, Jack. I never was. I hung up that maid's outfit as soon as the kids found out about me. I have my own reasons for what I do. Is it really a surprise to learn that the first among those reasons is you? Tell me, what's the proper term for a woman who shares a man's roof, keeps his house, raises his kids, keeps his secrets, and helps him further his career?" Her fingertips brushed his lips as she drew her hand away. "Really, isn't it time to take our relationship to the next level?"

He swallowed, and tried to control his breathing. "Anna, maybe I'm taking my life in my hands here, but I really think you ought to run a diagnostic check or something. This whole conversation is straight out of the Twilight Zone. You have to know that the whole man-woman thing is, well, complicated, too complicated to reduce to logical analysis. And there are … physical … biological … impediments …" He looked down at her arms, crossed at the wrists, forming an _**X**_ over his heart.

Her arms were bare to the shoulder.

Pushing down a frantic suspicion, he took a mental inventory of Anna's wardrobe: her uniform, of course, her housecoat, a useful variety of sturdy work clothes, a couple of dresses that looked perfectly natural under an apron … he couldn't remember _anything_ that didn't have sleeves.

"Jack, you should _feel_ your heartbeat, it's like you've run a mile. What are you thinking?"

"What are you wearing?"

"Heh. Well, I've had strangers call the house asking that, but I never expected it of you." She removed her arms from his neck and stepped around the couch. The first sight of her stopped his breath. She wasn't naked, as his runaway imagination had pictured her; she was wearing a simple dress in pale lavender, sleeveless, with a scoop neckline and a hem that ended four or five inches above the knee. It was made of some slightly stretchy material that fitted her closely without looking sprayed on, a perfect outfit for a party. It was far and away the most feminine thing he'd ever seen her wear. She placed a hand on her hip and turned around, looking over her shoulder at him. "How do I look?"

"Like a girl going on a date."

"A hot date?"

"Um, yes."

"Perfect." The stereo came on, seemingly by itself, playing some Sarah Maclaclan tune. She sat down sideways on the couch beside him, gracefully tucking her legs under her. "Chick rock, right?"

"Right." He diplomatically refrained from telling her that most males barely tolerated "chick rock," enduring it to make their girlfriends happy.

Or did she already know that? Was she subtly manipulating him, drawing him into playing the boyfriend role? What would happen if he continued to play along? How far would this go before she had to abandon her role as a flesh-and-blood woman? And then what? Would she flip her chips? Go catatonic? Go berserk?

"Jack, please don't be so worried. Try to relax, okay?" She smiled. "I know you think I'm buggy. Maybe so obsessed with becoming a human replica that I've forgotten what I am?' The smile she had been wearing fell off her face; she looked very intent. "I'm not going crazy. Smoke isn't going to start pouring out my ears if we have a frank discussion about this." She slid her hand under his, palm up, smoothly breaking his unconscious death grip on his thigh, lacing her fingers in his. "First, we have to agree on our assumptions. Then, maybe, we can apply some logic and reach some reasonable conclusions."

"Okay," he said cautiously. _A computer can arrive at insane answers with perfect logic, if the given assumptions are flawed._

"Okay. First: would you stipulate that my emotions are real, not just some kind of simulation employed as window dressing? I mean, does it really matter that mine start out as electrons whizzing down circuit paths, rather than … sparking synapses swimming in a stew of chemicals? We both smile at puppies and bridle at stupidity. It's true that I learned a lot of my behaviors by observing other people: so do babies. You've known me for two years, Jack. You've seen me worried, amused, peeved, outraged, and determined. Has it all been playacting, or is it real?" She was so close that he could feel her breath on his face as she spoke. It struck him that she had absolutely no odor. _What did you expect_, he asked himself, _hot oil and ozone?_

"Well, you're as entitled to your feelings as anybody else. At least, I always thought I respected them. Where are we going with this?"

"What you've just described is tolerance. That's not the same as acceptance. So here's the second question: if my feelings are as real to me as yours are to you, are my feelings as valid as yours? How much 'respect' are you willing to give them? This is the big one, Jack – take all the time you need to answer."

"Anna, I thought we settled this issue weeks ago, that night in the kitchen when we … talked about alternatives. I respected your decision, didn't I?"

"That was a special case. Are you willing to expand it into a general statement? Are my thoughts and emotions, my desires and ambitions, the decisions I make and the responsibilities I shoulder… Come on, Jack, just say it: _am I real or not?_"

He shifted in the seat. "Dammit, _yes!_ You're as real as anybody I know. I think most people go through their whole lives without being as alive as you. You're a real, honest-to-God _person,_ and I refuse to believe you don't know that I feel this way about you. Now what?"

"I love you, Jack."

"Oh, no, _please -"_

"Yes. I started falling in love with you the first day I met you, while I was still struggling with the definition. I want to make you happy. I want to give you everything I've got and take all you can give me. I want …" her voice dropped so low it was almost a whisper "…I want to make love with you … but I don't know if I can."

_How can she not know that it's impossible? What's wrong with her?_

"Anna, please stop. Just for a minute, please, listen to me. I think I understand what you want, I do. You're. … Anna, you're the best friend I've got, and I've had a lot of good friends. What you think and feel is important to me, and I don't know what I'd do without you. I don't want to say or do anything that would make you want to leave. But you said you wanted plain talk. So … bear with me here; I've got a feeling I'm only going to get one chance to say this, so I want it to come out right.

"I'm not made of stone, Anna. We've been sharing a house for two years. We've been sharing each others' lives and we're closer than most friends, probably closer than a lot of married couples. What you're offering me … no righteous man could be cold to that, not from someone he cares about and respects and trusts absolutely. And, more times than I can count, when we're doing something together, or just talking … I've wished you were flesh-and-blood.

"And there's the rock where this boat runs aground. How far could you expect this to go? Do you want to go to the movies and hold hands?" He lifted their joined hands slightly. "You got it. A husbandly kiss when I leave the house and come home? Gladly. Maybe you want to crawl into bed and cuddle?" He swallowed. "That would be hard, maybe just at first, but I'd be willing to do it. But, sooner or later, we're going to run headfirst into the hard fact that you're a marvel of engineering, _not_ a female human. You're a real person, Anna … but you're not a real woman. You understand where I'm going with this, don't you?" He couldn't bear to look her in the eye as he spoke: he found himself staring down at their clasped hands, studying them. He noted the exquisite detail of her fingers as they lay curled over his knuckles, the nails, short but perfectly manicured with the sheen of clear polish. The subtle skin shadings along their length.

The loops and whorls on the pads of her fingers …

From far away, he heard her say, "That is so _weird,_ the way you can make the hair on your arms rise up like that."

"You've got fingerprints," he said, suddenly feeling _very_ stupid.

"Doesn't everyone? Jack, I think you've been making assumptions. Have you ever heard that old saying about 'if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck'…" She gently unlaced her fingers from his and laid her hand, still palm-up, on his leg. "You know how to take a pulse, right?"

Using his freed hand, he took her wrist in his second and third fingers and immediately felt a steady beat under her skin. _How can she be doing this, she doesn't have a circulatory system!_ He looked up at her; she stared back, eyes heavy-lidded and cool. He tried to imagine camera lenses behind those gray-blue irises. _Hell, the human eye _is_ a camera lens, that's where the idea came from._

"There's one at the neck that you can try, too, isn't there?"

"I think you know damn well there is." Nevertheless, he reached up and touched his fingers to her neck. He wasn't surprised to feel a beat there, in time with the one on her wrist; what made his hand twitch was hearing her tiny intake of breath, and seeing her softly close her eyes and moisten her lips. Through his fingers on her neck, he felt her swallow.

"What was _that_ all about?"

"I just enjoy the feel of your hand on my bare skin." Eyes still closed, she reached up and laid her hand over his, guiding it upwards to rest on her cheek. "In two years, you've touched me eleven times, almost always on my hands or elbow."

He took a deep, slow breath. "Okay, but that's not what I meant. How the hell are you doing this?"

"You said it yourself, Jack: I'm a marvel of engineering." She reached up her other hand, clasping his hand between hers, bringing all three to rest in her lap. "We both know I was designed for something more than warehouse security. I'm carrying some pretty heavy ordnance for a night watchman, wouldn't you say? But, whatever else they had in mind, they intended me to be able to move among people undetected."

She turned his hand over, tracing a vein on the back of his hand, then turning it to touch the calluses on his fingers and the palm reader's lines. "They couldn't make me a perfect replica, but they did the best they could, and their best was pretty good. I can't fool an MRI or X-ray machine. Not even an airport metal detector without spoofing it. A cotton swab in my mouth won't yield any DNA. Anybody wanting to do a drug screen on me is going to be frustrated: anything I drink comes out the way it went in, you can't cut my nails with a pair of bolt cutters, and God knows where my hair comes from. A doctor examining me with an ophthalmoscope might not believe what he sees, but I can pass an exam with more basic diagnostic tools: penlight, stethoscope, BP cuff, and thermometer. And," she said, her eyes boring into his, "I wouldn't raise any suspicion undergoing a strip search … even a cavity search conducted by some grinning letch. So, to answer the question we seem to have been dancing around … yes, I most definitely _can._" She leaned forward until their heads were touching. "Poor Jack. You must have thought I had gears grinding up here, or something."

Her breath, soft and warm, caressed his face. Leaning forward had shifted her weight; he was acutely aware of his hand being pressed between her thighs. _Then why don't you move it, asshole?_ _Try not looking at her. Maybe that'll help._

Suddenly, she leaned back and looked at his face. Then she smiled, looking down at his hand in her lap.

"What?" _How long has she had those dimples when she smiles? They're cute as hell. And why am I noticing them now?_

"Tell you later, maybe." She gave his hand a quick squeeze.

He took a deep breath and blew it out. "Huh. I thought I was confused _before._ I can't even figure out if I owe you an apology. Anna, didn't you just say you can, not five minutes after you said you didn't know if you could?"

"Sorry, Jack. I'm having my own problems with this." She squeezed his hand, almost painfully hard. "All the plumbing is there. No uterus, but everything else I need. I even lubricate. The other gross physical reactions you'd expect are dialed in too. I don't produce pheromones, and the experts don't agree on how important they are to sexual satisfaction, but I know I can ... go through the motions." She caught her lower lip between her teeth. "What I don't – _can't _– know, is whether you'd find the experience … satisfactory. Jack, I'm not _stupid;_ I have a basic grasp of the human sexual experience. From my viewpoint, sex with a partner is like a chain reaction: each partner stimulates the other, producing a response that stimulates the first partner, increasing in intensity until one or both reach a climax."

"I've never heard anyone compare sex to nuclear physics before."

"Nuclear physics is easier to learn."

"Oh, come _on._"

"Man that I love, nuclear physics is _much _easier. It's easier because you can approach the subject with absolutely _no_ prior knowledge, and still learn all about it through systematic study. If you have to, you start with simple arithmetic and basic science. You progress into more and more advanced studies until you can split atoms with your teeth.

"But how would you learn the math you needed for nuclear physics, if everyone but you had an intuitive grasp of algebra from birth? If there were no arithmetic primers because nobody but you needed to _learn_ it? How could you possibly make the jump from counting on your fingers to solving differentials? _That's _where all my uncertainty and frustration are coming from. That interplay of stimulus and response is hardwired into bios at birth; there are no 'primers' I can use to create a solid starting point for my research. I've tried every avenue I can think of, but I can't find a source of information that I can trust."

He said slowly, "There are books on the subject…"

"There are _libraries_ on the subject."

"But no 'primers'."

"No. There are decades of research by professionals all over the world, mountains of data. It's easy to find catalogues of sexual positions, even illustrated ones; they don't tell you anything about triggering love or desire. If you want to know the average age for a first sexual encounter, grouped by gender and ethnicity, or a bell graph showing frequency of intercourse by income, you can find it. You can learn anything you can want about human sexuality – so long as you know half the answer to begin with." She touched her head to his again. "So I abandoned scholarly research and considered popular media."

"Uhuh. This is about to become a horror story, isn't it?"

"Well, I expected difficulties. There are bound to be cultural assumptions in books and magazines and such; you just pay close attention, never draw a conclusion from a single datum, and mostly you're all right.

"I started with the materials at hand: Roxanne has a big collection of 'women's interest' magazines and some of them featured articles with some pretty promising titles. 'One Hundred and One Ways to Drive Him Crazy in Bed'; 'Sex Secrets Guys Won't Tell You'; 'What Every Man Wishes Women Knew About Sex'-"

"These are _Roxy's_?"

"I think she's doing research, too." The corner of her mouth twitched. "I may have picked up some valid information, but most of the 'tips' in those magazines are so vague or contradictory, so much the product of circular analysis, that I know I should discard ninety per cent of them; but which tenth should I keep? So, I turned to the 'magazines for men' that the boys keep on hand, thinking I might learn what men look for in a woman."

"What did you think of _those_?"

"_Not_ what I was looking for. Well, they do devote a lot of effort to comparative studies of the female _form,_ apparently trying to define the look of an ideal partner, but the 'sex tips' focus on seducing, then arousing, the woman - and seem just as prone to supposition as Roxy's magazines. I decided to examine any fiction I could find that dealt with the subject, looking for clues, and I discovered a whole genre of literature devoted to intimate relationships, from the woman's point of view."

"_Romance novels?"_

"Yes. At first, it seemed like I'd hit pay dirt, the mother lode, even: many of those books are filled with explicit detail on how men and women respond to each other's advances, with almost universal success. But then…" She looked bemused.

_It doesn't matter where she looks. She'll never find what she's looking for. It doesn't exist._

"Jack, the men in those books aren't _anything _like the men I know! They tend to fall into two broad categories: either they're overgrown children, moody, obtuse, infuriating and impulsive; or they're gods of seduction, able to sweep a woman off her feet with a glance, and straight into sexual rapture and eternal love."

"Heh. Ever happen that one guy is _both _types?"

"Pretty common plot device, actually. Often, the female lead starts out despising the guy destined to become her lover. As the story progresses, the woman unmasks the man's alternate, more desirable personality or, if he's promiscuous, binds him to her exclusively. But her methods are so vague and undefined it just seems to happen by itself. I began to lose confidence in the data. Maybe that stuff works with real people, maybe not. Once again, I can't know what I know - and don't know - until I put it into practice.

"Pretty close to despair, I decided to see if guys have a 'romance' equivalent genre. Apparently they do, but in visual media rather than print. I noticed that a small section of the video store is almost exclusively used by men; I rented several of the titles and studied them."

An image leaped into his mind: Anna sitting through hours of porn flicks, scribbling notes.

"All right, mister, what are you chuckling about?"

He got himself in hand. "Sorry, I know you're dead serious about all this. I'm just trying to imagine anyone trying to teach themselves about the birds and the bees reading 'Heaving Bosoms of Desire,' then watching 'The Cheerleaders Take Five'. There's got to be a better way …" As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew what was coming.

"You're right. The performers in those pictures – I can't call them actors – they didn't even bother to feign passion; half of them seemed to be thinking about getting their tires rotated or something. Jack, I've only mentioned the high points of my research; I looked in _lots _more places. But I came up short every time." She looked him in the eyes from eight inches away. "This isn't how I wanted it to be, Jack. I feel like _I've_ got just one chance to do this. You know, when you build a nuke, there are about a zillion ways to do it wrong. Minute impurities in the fissionable material will cause a result far below the nominal yield; a little higher percentage of 'dirt' and the reaction can't support itself – it fizzles out. And if there's some mistake in the engineering or something basic missing in the design … the reaction doesn't even start. A dud."

She looked away. "I really, really didn't want to risk a flawed performance. I wanted to come to you with some _expertise,_ confident that I could drive you mad with desire for me. I wanted you to wake up certain that I was a real woman, the only woman for you." She smiled ruefully, still not looking at him. "Like the heroine in a romance novel. Instead, here I am, trying out my pathetic little seduction techniques, not knowing whether you'll like me any better than masturbating with a blowup doll."

He stifled an automatic protest. _She's right, she knows she's right, and she can spot bullshit in about a millisecond._

"So, what do you say, Jack? Got a nice little ride right here, plenty of options, no miles on her; all that's missing is the new-car smell. Comes with a money-back guarantee. How about taking her out for a spin and seeing how she handles?" Her voice turned low and earnest. "Just once. Introduce me to the Mysteries, Jack. If it's just a matter of inexperience, well, maybe you could bring me along? A guy like you must have handled clumsy virgins before. You know I'm a quick study."

_You couldn't be more wrong, Anna. I'm not like Caitlin's dad. As far as I know, I've never had a virgin in my life._

"And if you decide there's something wrong, something that can't be made right between us … I'll take that as the final word. I won't make any trouble about it. I won't mention it again. I won't pout or make cow eyes at you. I won't leave, unless you send me away. I'll stay right here and keep taking care of things the best I can. I'll even put on the little maid outfit and go back to being Anna the housekeeper, if that's what I have to do …"

He had never heard a woman's voice so full of tears. He looked, but her eyes were dry. _Of course her tear ducts are props. What use would IO have for an assassin android that cries?_ But his free hand had a mind of its own, it seemed; it reached up to touch her cheek.

"What? Are you …"

"Just looking for something that really ought to be there."

Instantly, her eyes filled with tears that dripped down her face and onto his hand. He wiped at her cheek with his thumb.

"Thank you, Jack. Tears are tricky, you know? I'm never sure when they're appropriate. People cry when they're hurt or sad or scared or even happy. I saw Roxanne cry once when she was mad enough to tear the house down …" She blinked, dewing her lashes.

He said gently, "Tears are for when your emotions get out of hand. The threshold's different from one person to the next. Almost any emotion will do. Except hate. I never saw anyone cry from feeling too much hate." He brought his tear-jeweled finger to his lips.

"Don't."

He paused. "Toxic?"

"Course not. But they won't taste right."

He touched her tear to his lips. No salt; something else, sweet almost. Different but not unpleasant. No matter; he'd tasted enough tears to know what they were, and what they weren't.

_I can't believe I'm about to do this. No matter what she says, things would never be the same between us._

In the firmest voice he could manage, he said, "Anna, let go of my hand."

Her grip on his hand relaxed a tiny fraction, loosening further as he pulled it away. When it was free, he slid away from her … for about eight inches, which gave him enough room to slide his hand between her and the back of the couch and circle her waist. He pulled, hard, and with a quick little gasp she was in his arms, knees straddling him with her skirt hiked up around her hips, her hands resting on his shoulders. Her chin was level with his lips; he gave it a quick kiss.

"I have some conditions."

"Yes."

"I haven't told you what they are yet."

"It doesn't matter. Yes."

"No, we're going to talk about them, and you're going to agree to them – one at a time. First: if we're going to do this, we're going to give it a fair chance. That means we spend all the time we can on it - even if it doesn't look promising at first - and especially, no judgments until morning, after we've _both _had a little time to think it over. It's going to be a short night anyway; I have to leave early - I have an appointment I've _got _to keep. Sorry. Or we could postpone –"

"_No! _I really don't think I could bear to wait, Jack. We've got, what, four hours? It'll have to do." She slid her arms around his neck. "Jack, you're so _strong._"

He snorted. "What are you talking about? You could bench press me with one thumb."

"It's got nothing to do with your muscles. It's coming off you in _waves_. As soon as you put your arms around me, I felt safe from any threat. I feel as if you can accomplish things that are beyond normal men." She sighed and laid her chin on his shoulder. "Maybe my judgment of romance novels was a little hasty."

"Well, if you start feeling that way about the porn flicks, give me some warning. Two more conditions, Anna. Are you still with me?"

She said into the side of his neck, "Oh, yes. I am _sooo_ with you." Then she said something else, so softly that he would have missed it if he hadn't felt her lips move against his neck. "I've missed you."

He decided to ignore the last cryptic remark; no doubt there would come a more appropriate time to discuss it. He ran his hands up her sides, then under her arms and gently pulled her away until he could look into her eyes. "Second: no matter how this turns out, it stays between us. Don't let the kids know."

"Jack, we might do this once and get away with it forever, but I don't think much of our chances of… keeping an intimate relationship secret from five people sharing our house."

"Well … We'll burn that bridge when we cross it. Believe me, Anna, having the kids find out would complicate things around here beyond _all_ imagination."

She nodded. "Okay. We'll burn that bridge when we cross it. I'll do a probability analysis; we may need to weigh options – I hope. Third?"

"Third: also regardless of how this turns out. Tomorrow, I want you to take those maid's outfits out of your closet. Give them to a costume shop or throw them away; just get rid of them, because you're never going to wear them again."

"Thank you, Jack." Her arms circled his neck again. "Okay, the deal is done, so when do we start?"

His arms were already around her waist; his hands traveled up her spine, her shoulders, the back of her slender neck; then, with his forearms behind her shoulders, he pulled her hard against him, bringing his hands forward to hold her head between them. "We already did," he said as he brought their faces an inch apart.

"Thought so."


	2. Secrets

"Bobby! Dude! Wake up!"

Bobby cracked one eye open. "This better be good, bro. You just yanked me out of a _most _excellent dream."

Eddie's voice was an urgent whisper. "Dude, you are not gonna _believe_ what's happening on the living room couch right now."

Something inside him went tight. "What, Sarah bring a friend home?" As he said it, he rejected the idea; even Eddie wouldn't be callous enough to drop _that _on him like this, asleep and unprepared. Besides, his friend's attitude seemed all wrong; if Sarah were making out with another girl in the living room, he'd be a lot more interested and a lot less … apprehensive, worried?

"No – It's your dad … and _Anna!_"

He closed his eye and settled down to sleep again. "Relax, man. You know how thick those two are. They got secrets we'll never know. They probably put their heads together and hatch plots every night."

"Dude, am I _stupid?_ She's in his _lap!_"

That brought both eyes open. "Word?"

"Word. Knees on his hips. All wrapped around each other, playin' slobber hockey. The countdown to thread shed has begun."

"Well. How 'bout that." He closed his eyes.

"Dude, don't you get it? He's making out with _Anna!_"

"Good for them. Maybe she can get him to loosen up a little, make a human being out of him. Lemme go back to sleep." And he drifted off, with a sketch of a smile at the corner of his mouth. _Dad and Anna. Secret Agent and Stepford Wife. Alias meets Battlestar Galactica. Is there a more unlikely pair in this freakin house? If _they _can come together …_

A _most _excellent dream, about a beautiful dark-haired girl.

-0-

Even for six A.M., Lynch thought, the kitchen was unusually quiet. As he stepped through the doorway, he saw Anna working at the counter, her back to the door. On the table, at his usual place, was a place setting with a big mug of coffee and a toasted bagel, with cream cheese and jelly in small containers on the side; she knew he ate light when traveling.

His first impulse was to go to her, not the table; but that careful, almost formal, setting gave him pause. He studied the precise arrangement of utensils arrayed alongside the small plate; the steam rising from the coffee and bagel, both obviously placed there moments before he arrived, giving her just enough time to return to the counter. She was putting dishes away, moving slowly, with exaggerated care, as if a twitch or a misstep would shatter them in her hands. She never glanced at him. He sat down and took a sip of the coffee. Perfect, as always.

"Good morning, Anna."

"Good morning." _Not 'Jack' or 'John' or even 'Sir.' This is not_ _the morning after I was expecting. What's going on in her head?_

He plunged in. "You seem awfully quiet this morning." He took another sip, a big one. Was he nervous?

Her back still turned, she said, "Post-coital depression, maybe."

"_Hkkkt!" _Coffee shot out his nose; instantly she was at his side with a pair of cloths, wiping his shirt with one and the table with the other. "Oops. Good thing you take your coffee black, Johnny Cash. If you don't have time to change, the stain will match your shirt."

She paused. Suddenly, he was acutely aware of her hand, pressed against his chest through two layers of damp cloth. She removed it, and began to turn away. He caught her wrist. He was certain she could break his grip, or could have eluded his grasp in the first place; nevertheless, she stopped as if trapped.

"You're _trembling._"

"I'm just … having a little motor control problem this morning." She seemed embarrassed. "A prioritizing glitch in my reflex subroutines."

"Huh?"

"It's a sort of decision loop. My motion controller doesn't know what I want to do most – avoid you or, or throw myself in your arms. So, it's trying to orchestrate both choices at once, several times a second." She gently tugged her wrist out of his grip. "I'm sure the conflict will resolve itself after, after you leave." She stood, waiting.

_God, she looks like a little kid. How am I going to explain this to her?_

He pushed the soaked place setting away, disordering the neat arrangement. "Anna, I know I promised you a … 'performance evaluation' this morning. But, to give you a fair and complete answer, I have to ask you first: what was _your _impression? What was it like for you?"

She was silent for so long, he almost asked again. _How long is ten seconds to someone who thinks at computer speeds? _Finally, she said, "It wasn't what I expected."

"Come again? I thought you didn't _have _any preconceptions about this – in fact, it was your biggest worry."

She seemed to be struggling to express herself. "I guess I did, after all. I thought, at least, unless something fundamentally wrong between us came up, something we'd both be aware of right away, I was sure how things would go. I'd be giving you pleasure, proving myself to you, and you'd be stopping me if I made a misstep, guiding me, and I'd get pleasure, sure, the same way you always make me happy, by making you happy - " She caught herself. "I'm babbling. That decision loop must be getting worse."

"What else? Tell it all, Anna."

"Well, you were right, to insist that we wait until morning. I wasn't thinking too clearly at all, during. But afterwards, I started playing it all back, and I think I understand what happened, even if I can't seem to find words to describe it. I see now, why I never found what I was looking for in books.

"I guess you must have seen it was hopeless at the very beginning, Jack. You didn't try to tell me _anything._ Instead, you gave me a … a bittersweet sort of gift I'll always treasure. You showed me what a man could do for a woman, instead. The way we moved together, the way you made me feel … it was like we could read each other's minds, like we were the same person, almost. And the wealth of sensations, the feel of you, the touch of you … I felt as if I were approaching an overload of some sort. I had to perform a partial shutdown to deal with it." Her eyes filled with tears. She wiped at them, clumsily. "I'm so sorry, Jack. I tried, I know you had pleasure last night – I'm not wrong about _that_, surely? … but I _know_ I got better than I gave."

He pushed his chair back from the table. "Well, you're right, Anna," he said thoughtfully. "This has got to be about the worst case of post-coital depression I've ever heard of. I hope you're not going to be like this _every _morning after."

Her face twitched. "Every -"

"I had to ask you first," he said gravely, "because what you described is _exactly _the way you made _me_ feel. Except for the 'overload' and 'partial shutdown' part; that sounds like 'orgasm' to me, but 'if it looks like a duck …'

"B-but, Jack, that doesn't add up …"

"Nope. I told you the man-woman thing wouldn't." He twitched a smile. "Think of it as a sort of special relativity. Little one, I didn't tell you anything because I didn't _need _to; guess love taught you what intellect couldn't. But that's the way it is between a man and a woman … when it's perfect."

She whispered, "Perfect?"

"It doesn't happen all that often, not even between married couples. It may never happen between us again. But doing it even once cements your membership in the Girls Club, sweetheart. I might even rate you as a suprmph - phmm … heymm … Anmm – lemme breathe, girl!"

She shifted in his lap slightly and pulled her face back, about half an inch. "My software conflict seems to be all better now."

"Obviously." She was sitting sideways in his lap; one of his arms cradled her bottom, the other lay across her thighs, providing her a secure seat. He stroked her thigh with a thumb. "As I was saying, a superbly gifted amateur."

"So, I might improve with practice?"

"If you improve on last night, you might be in the market for a new boyfriend. I'm not sure I'd live through the night."

"Oh, pooh. I happen to know you're in great shape. That reminds me," she said, standing up and clearing the dishes. "Are you going to make it to your annual physical today? This is your third reschedule." She popped another bagel in the toaster and brought the coffee pot to the table, refilling his mug.

"Um, what time? And where? I really don't want to leave any records in a doctor's office."

"Between three and four this afternoon, here in town. I'll make sure you have the address before you leave. The records aspect is taken care of, trust me. So is payment. All you have to do is show up, 'Mister Lane'."

"Okay, so long as it doesn't take more than ninety minutes."

"That's between you and the doctor, dear."

"You know, I don't recall having done a checkup before."

"That's because it's your _first _annual checkup. I never _did_ get you to the doctor last year. You've got a young girlfriend now; you've got to take care of your health." The bagel popped up; she glided to the counter and brought it back to the table. "I can't save you from a bullet when you're halfway across the world, but I _will _keep you from dying of prostate cancer, even if I have to hold you down and perform the exam myself."

"Some men might enjoy that. By the way, where did you go last night? When I go to bed with a woman, I expect to wake up with her." _Even though I couldn't have slept for an hour._

"That would have been nice; you looked so cute, drooling on your pillow. But how soon do you want to blow our cover, lover? The kids respect curfew, but you never established a lights-out policy. About four nights out of seven, between two and five A.M., at least one of those kids is up and about. I couldn't afford to get caught coming out of your room to fix breakfast, in clothes I wore the night before. "

He sipped from his mug. "You _don't_ think much of our chances, do you?"

"Remember when they first came here, and we tried to keep them from knowing I was anything but hired help? I figure the odds at no better than fifty-fifty for a week, decreasing to near zero within a month. Likeliest person to figure it out is Sarah; she's the most sensitive to body language and personal relationships. Likeliest to actually catch us in a situation we can't explain away is about even between Eddie and Roxanne; they keep the most irregular hours."

"All right, figure we won't keep the lid on for more than a few days. Is that estimate based on the assumption that I'll be home every night?" He looked down at his plate. The bagel was gone; he didn't remember touching it. _Hell of an appetite you've suddenly developed, buddy._

She reached over him to take the plate away, running the fingers of her other hand through his hair. "A girl can dream, can't she?"

"Well, tonight I will be – at least if I'm home by eleven. Otherwise not. Anna, I don't want the kids just stumbling onto this; I want to _handle _the situation before it comes up. You know them better than I do, even Bobby. What do you think we should do?"

She paused, then sat at the table – in a seat, he noted, where they could both watch the doorway – and said, "Well, first of all, I don't think we should make some big announcement. Act as if it's no big thing, and thereby plant the assumption that they should, too. We don't want to break the news to them one at a time, though – too likely one of them will leak it to the others. I think the most natural way would be for you to tell the boys together, and I'll tell the girls."

"Okay, good." _I wasn't looking forward to telling the girls about this._ "Trouble is, I can't just 'drop in' on the boys for a little chat; it'd be an obvious maneuver."

"You used to spar with Eddie every week. It's been a while; he'd probably jump at the offer. Maybe you could invite Bobby to referee?"

"Sure, maybe he could call an ambulance for me, while Eddie catches his breath." Eddie Chang was tournament-class proficient in three martial arts styles, and fast as a mongoose _before _he manifested; only Lynch's real-world hand-to-hand experience and Genactive reflexes had allowed him to keep his head on his shoulders during those matches.

"Oh, Jack, he's never knocked you down – not that he doesn't try, every time – and you've put his shoulders to the mat three times that I know of. It's comical, the way he tries to figure out how to beat an opponent who doesn't play by the rules."

"Okay, tomorrow or possibly the next day. What about you? How will you get the girls together in one place long enough to talk to them?"

She stood up, bending over him to glance into his coffee cup; less than in inch of liquid remained. He inhaled, slowly but deeply, straining for some scent he could identify with her. Hints of bath soap, shampoo, cleaning products … it would have to do, he supposed. The rest of the package was so fine, how could he complain that his girlfriend had no smell?

She gave him a quick kiss. "We'll go _shopping, _of course. I need a _ton _of girl stuff. Starting with some perfume." She gave his nose a quick squeeze. "Got a preference?"

"Uh, no. The store where you got that dress you wore last night … does it sell perfume?"

"Think so. Buy it there?" She moved back to the sink, rinsing the dishrag she'd used to mop the table.

"Only if you can talk to the sales girl who sold you that dress; she knows her girl stuff. Don't stop buying until the car is full. And make sure payment comes out of _my_ account."

She looked amused. "Man of mine, I have my own money."

It would have been callous and unfair to reply that her chief source of income was the wages he paid her; she earned every dime, regardless of where it came from. Instead, he said, "You'll have plenty of chances to spend it, I'm sure. Just this once, though, let me feel like I'm pampering you. Let me fill your closet."

Likewise, he would never tell her that, when he woke that morning and found her gone, he had gone looking for her in her own room, entering it for the first time since she had moved in. To him, it had looked as sparse and impersonal as a hotel room occupied by a weekend guest: no personal touches, drawers only part full, less than a third of the rods in the closet hung with clothing, two pairs of shoes – not including the hunting boots way in the back, which she _never _wore. She had lived two years under his roof, working tirelessly for the comfort and happiness of six other people, and everything she owned would fit in a footlocker.

_You're worth a lot more to me than a paycheck, Anna. You always were. It's past time I started letting you know._

"All right," she said, "let's make sure we've both got your itinerary. When are you leaving this morning?"

He glanced at his watch. _Have I really been in the kitchen for just thirteen minutes? Amazing, how little time it takes to stand your life on its ear. _"I have to be out the door by six-thirty to catch my plane. That gives me just enough time for a fresh shirt – and a husbandly kiss."

"Best do it before you leave the kitchen, the kids will start stirring any minute. Okay, let's see: out the door by six-thirty; spy games until your doctor's appointment at three; five-thirty, more cloak-and-dagger I presume; home by eleven, and by eleven-thirty I'll be screwing your brains out."

"_Hkkkt!_"

She turned to him, eyebrow lifted, dishrag in hand. "I thought you were done with that coffee."

-0-

After Jack left, the kitchen started getting busy. Eddie was the next person to enter her tiled little lair, and she saw instantly that something was wrong.

"Eddie, you look _terrible,_" she said, taking in the puffy eyes and subdued manner. A quick infrared scan showed normal body temp; nevertheless, she pressed her hand to his forehead as a gesture of concern. "Are you sick? Do you need to stay home from school?" In two years, she had _never_ seen Jack or the kids come down with _anything;_ her only observation of human sickness came from strangers and acquaintances. Bugs didn't have much chance against Genactive immune systems.

"I'll be alright, Anna," he said, giving her a strange look that set off an alert in her threat discrimination software.

_Chance of discovery: four percent plus-minus two._

"I didn't get any sleep last night," he added.

_Seven percent plus-minus two._

"Semester exams are coming up, Eddie. Photographic memory aside, you'll need your rest to do your best. What would you like for breakfast?"

"Um, not hungry, thanks."

"Well, you're not getting out of here without a glass of juice, at least, and a vitamin pill." _Eddie, you're always hungry, and even if you're not, then why are you here? Fifteen percent plus-minus three._

He sat down heavily. "Okay, sure. So … how _you _feelin' this morning?"

_Twenty-eight percent plus-minus three. Eddie, you have _never_ asked me that question, even when you thought I was flesh-and-blood. _She smiled. "Never better, Eddie. Got a song in my heart." She poured a glass of orange juice and removed a bottle of multivitamins from the cabinet, shaking a pill out of it into her palm.

"Gettin' along with the L-man okay?" He asked the question with careful disinterest, but she noted a slight elevation of his heart rate.

_Forty-seven percent plus-minus three; even odds. All right, let's go fishing for some confirmation._

"Better every day. This morning, he paid me quite a compliment."

"Really." The tone of voice and the glance he gave her said it all.

_Bingo. Ninety-eight percent plus-minus one. Close enough._

"Yes. He asked my advice on a personal matter; turns out my advice wasn't very good." She set the glass on the table in front of him and held the pill in her open palm. When he reached for it, she closed her hand on his fingers. "Edmund Chang, stop dancing around and tell me what's on your mind."

He took a deep breath, let it out. "I saw you and Mister Lynch last night. In the living room."

_So much for probability analysis. Looks like our little secret was out before we got to the bedroom. Sorry, Jack._ She nodded. "And?"

She had never seen any man but Jack look so grave. "Anna … did you … I mean … did he _order _you?"

From her point of view, his question caused a sudden shift in her predictive programming: a hundred assumptions were discarded while she reevaluated known data and searched for new data from Eddie. All her attention focused on this miserable boy, to the exclusion of almost all other external stimuli. Her processor shunted progressively larger blocks of resources to analysis of his posture, voice, and recent actions. After almost a thousand milliseconds, the demand reached her motion controller, causing a momentary interruption. At that point, she canceled further inquiry and restored her resource allocation to default settings.

From Eddie's point of view, she stopped for a second, still gripping his fingers, and stared at him, completely taken back. It amounted to exactly the same thing.

"Oh, Eddie," she said. "How could you _think _such a thing about him? He would _never_ … Eddie, were you _worried _for me?" She let go of his hand and planted a kiss on top of his head. "That is so _sweet._ But I'm not a robot from a sci-fi movie; I don't have to follow orders, and he wouldn't treat me like that. Last night was all _my _idea; he was jumpy as a mouse about it. I had to cry on him just to get him to kiss me, and when we went to bed –"

"Whoa, TMI, time out!" The relief seemed to come all the way up from his toes, it was so complete. The boisterous kid was back; it was as if the concerned young man from a moment before had never existed. "That's girlfriend gossip."

She grinned. "Hungry now?"

"Well, maybe some toast. With jelly. And a couple eggs."

"And six sausage links? Some cereal to get you started?" The bowl, spoon, milk and box were in front of him before she finished speaking. She mussed his hair on the way back to the counter, and he grinned like an idiot.

She stopped, skillet in one hand and eggs in the other, and let out a laugh. "Oh, my. You remember that 'personal advice' I told you about? Mister Lynch wanted to tell you boys about us; I suggested he do it during a sparring match. I suddenly imagined you two on the mat, and you asking _him _that question."

He dropped his spoon. "Not hungry."

"Oh, pooh. I bet you could outrun him if you _really _wanted to. By the way … this has got to stay just between us for a day or so, until we can break it gently to everybody."

"Uh huh."

"I mean it, Eddie. Not even Roxanne." She heard his heart speed up. "Eddie," she said, in a conspirator's voice, "let's make a deal. You don't tell anybody about me and Jack … and I'll continue to keep quiet about your aptitude tests coming in as high as Caitlin's."

The alarm on his face was comical. "No way! I saw the scores!"

"So did I. I'm talking about your real scores, after I recalculated them to compensate for all the questions you threw. Once I started looking, it was obvious: you shouldn't have flubbed the easy questions in the same section where you aced the hard ones. Guess you got bored with thinking up wrong answers." She dropped sausage into the hot skillet and cracked eggs into a cup. "So you'll keep your mouth shut, or you'll spend the rest of your adolescence listening to every girl in this house lecturing you on your 'wasted potential'."

"Anna … I already told someone." He looked unhappy.

"What – who?" _Please, not Caitlin, she needs special handling …_

"Bobby, last night."

_Jack's son. Almost as bad, maybe. _"Did he say anything?"

"Yeah. He said, 'good for them.'"

"Oh. That's good, isn't it? He wasn't being sarcastic?"

"No, he meant it. And one other thing. He said he hoped you could make his dad … more human."

She kissed the top of his head again, leaning over to put her arms around his neck. "Okay, the deal stands. Just don't talk to anybody else about it for forty-eight hours." _Well, that lets Jack off the hook. I just need to talk to the girls before Eddie explodes._

"Hey," said Bobby, eyebrows raised as he entered the kitchen, "am I interrupting anything?"

Anna let go of Eddie and wrapped her arms around Bobby. "Thank you, Bobby. For understanding about your dad and me."

"I don't know if I _do_ understand. But it's your business, not mine." He, returned the embrace, smiling. "The meals stop coming on time cuz you're necking with your boyfriend, _that's _my business."

She lingered in his embrace, feeling his living heartbeat, feeling her pulse change pace to match it. _He feels so much like his dad, holding me like this; it's wonderful. The girl who wins his heart will win real treasure. _"You look _so _much like your dad, when you smile like that."

Instantly, the smile disappeared. "When does Dad ever smile?"

"You've got to look in the eyes, Bobby. The smile's in there."

"Yeah." He slipped out of her arms, retrieving a cereal bowl from the cupboard. "So, who's going to tell the girls?"

She beat half-and-half into the eggs as she turned over the sausage. "Me. Tonight, after school. If that doesn't work out, tomorrow night for sure. Can you keep a lid on it until then?"

He sat down and exchanged a look with Eddie as he reached for the cereal. "Shouldn't be a problem. Right, bro?"

"Absolutely." Eddie slid the milk container over to Bobby. "Like, discretion is our middle name."


	3. Suspicions

San Diego  
March 2006

"There's something weird going on," Sarah said to Roxy. A light drizzle was falling; Kat had insisted on dropping them all off under the canopy in front of school and was six rows out in the lot, parking. The boys were long gone. "I noticed it yesterday. The guys are all acting strange around Anna. Lynch included." Roxy noted, not for the first time, that their guardian was "Mister Lynch" to Sarah only when she addressed him directly. "She seems really odd, too."

"Odd? Really? You know, sometimes she seems a little different to me, too. Like when she's changing a flat tire without any tools."

"Roxy, are you going to tell me you haven't noticed _anything?_ The way they all look at one another, the way Anna's got extra touchy-feely with the boys … did you at least notice that she fixed each of them his favorite breakfast this morning?"

"Sarah, she fixes us almost anything we ask for. All you gotta do is ask."

"That's just what I'm talking about: they didn't. She filled _our _orders when we came to breakfast; the boys had theirs waiting when they got there. And the way they keep stealing glances at her, and looking at each other … they might as well have 'I've got a secret' tattooed on their foreheads." She glanced out towards the lot, where Kat was just backing into a space.

"So, what then? You think they've got something on her?" _And why don't you want to talk about this with Kat around?_

"No … not the way she's behaving around them. Lately, she can't seem to pass by one of them without touching him. A hand on the shoulder when they're talking, taking just a little too long to let go of something she hands them … this morning, she mussed Bobby's _hair, _Roxy. He spends fifteen minutes every morning getting it just right; besides his music, it's his only vanity. And _she_ roughs his hair up as she's taking his plate, and he doesn't bother to straighten it out."

"Sarah, do you suppose she's feeling …" she let her eyelids droop suggestively, "stirrings?"

"Laugh if you want. It's not _my _boyfriend she's trading meaningful glances with."

"Well, if Bobby's not yours, he isn't anybody's." She felt her temper rising. "He treats _me _like a kid sister."

"He's nice enough, for a guy," she said primly. "But after we've been getting along for a while, he starts _acting _like a boyfriend, and that ruins it all."

_Well, maybe you should give him a frickin __clue_ _what you really want from him. How many times have we all seen some version of _this _scene: Bobby's sitting on the couch, watching TV, minding his own business. You come in, and with about eight places to sit down, you plop down right next to him, not even __looking_ _at him, and lean on him like he was your own personal pillow. He'll spend the next ten minutes sitting there with you, not talking, not moving, hardly breathing, pretending he's still watching the screen, while he's deciding to stick with what he's got or go for what's behind the curtain. If he puts an arm around you, about half the time, you'll snuggle up, maybe even put your head on his shoulder, and he's happy as a kid on Christmas. The other half, you shrug his arm off like it's raw liver, and he feels like a total jerk. And if he decides it's just not worth the risk today, gets up and leaves the room cuz he can't stand it? You watch him leave like he said something rude before he left. You're playing with him, big time; and if I wasn't a hundred percent sure that you're doing it because you're totally screwed up in the head over him, if I thought for one second you were doing it to mess him up … you and I would be having words, Pocahontas._

"The weirdest part," Sarah continued, "is the way she's acting around Lynch. Reserved, almost. She called him 'sir' _twice _this morning."

"So? She calls him 'sir' all the time."

"No, Roxanne. About a month ago, she quit calling him 'sir'… and started calling him 'Jack'."

"Um … Okay. What's your point?"

"_He's _not reacting properly. Instead of acting snubbed, he seems … _amused, _like he knows they're all putting on a performance."

Kat was walking towards them; she was four cars away, but her long strides were closing the distance fast. Sarah lowered her voice, "Don't tell Caitlin about this yet. She's a brainiac, and guys start walking into the walls when she comes into a room, but she's a child about some things. You just keep your eyes open; we'll talk about it later."

Kat crossed the final stretch of asphalt to join them on the sidewalk. A half-block walk in the rain, Roxanne noted sourly, made her look even _hotter:_ a light drizzle couldn't do much to hurt that simple hairstyle, and the damp made her clothes _just _clingy enough. "Kat, you could at least _act _like the rain bothers you."

"You're kidding, right? I was raised in _Seattle. _Hey, are you guys doing anything tonight? Anna wanted me to ask." As Roxanne and Sarah shared a look, she went on, "Actually, I think she wanted to do something together last night, but I had to go to the library."

Roxanne glanced again at Sarah. "I'm open."

"Me, too; nothing I can't skip, anyway. This is a bit unusual, don't you think? I mean, when was Anna ever up for a girls' night out?"

"First time for everything, I guess." Kat looked at her watch. "We'd better go." She headed towards the door, never noticing the way the crowd parted in front of her like a bow wave, guys' heads turning towards her like sunflowers to daylight.

Once again, Sarah looked at Roxanne. "Clueless."

-0-

"Ow." The new guy, one locker over from Marty, rubbed the knot on his forehead where he'd whapped it with his own locker door. "I can't believe I just did that." But he kept on staring at Kat until she was out of sight. "Who was _that_? And who was she waving to?"

"Caitlin Fairchild, postgrad, computer science. Minor in physics. And she was waving to me."

"Uh huh." The guy was almost as tall as Kat, and used every inch of it to look down his nose at him. He knew what the guy saw, and what he was thinking: _why would a babe like that give a shriveled geek like you the time of day?_

"I'm her lab partner this semester." He opened his locker. "No doubt she wants me to follow her to commons and compare notes."

The guy stuck his massive paw out. "Chad Baker."

He took it. _Please don't let him be one of those hand-crunching Neanderthals; I'm already half certain he's here on a sports scholarship. _"Martin Fallon, sophomore, aeronautical engineering." They gripped hands briefly. "Kind of late in the school year for a transfer."

"Yeah, well, I had to be enrolled in time for spring training."

_Oh, God. A football jock. What was the Board thinking when they hired an ex-PAC Ten coach to run our anemic football team? The guy won't quit until we've got media contracts, and we're overrun with gorillas on athletic scholarships._

Chad grinned. "So… now that we know each other, how bout taking me with you to commons?"

"Are you kidding? Trying to get a seat next to her in commons is harder than crossing the freeway on foot. If I want to get any work done with her, it'll have to be after class." He started switching books from his pack into the locker, and pulling others off the shelves into the bag. "The guys who've been here a while know better than to crowd her, but there are always enough new ones to form a gauntlet."

"Didn't seem like an ice queen."

"She's not; she's nice, really nice. But she doesn't date. Ever."

"Oh, come _on_."

"Truth. If she ever went out with somebody after classes, it'd be all over campus by morning; there'd probably be pictures on MySpace. Except for sports, nobody sees her outside of the library after school."

"Sports girl, huh? Basketball?"

"Water polo. She's the goalie, and nobody's scored on her since the first week. We haven't lost a game since she joined. Attendance has gone up two hundred percent."

Chad grinned. "Every guy in school must go to watch her splash around in a swimsuit."

_He _must _be here on a scholarship._ "That too. Last time she lunged to catch a ball, they broke the bleachers."

"Don't suppose she's got any sisters?"

"Two, actually, half sisters I think: Roxanne and Sarah. They go here, too. Maybe three, but the oldest is out of school. She picks them up and drops them off sometimes."

"Hot?"

"Let's just say that extraordinary and exotic beauty seems to run in the family." He closed his locker door, and _she _was standing there, sixty-three inches from head to heels and every one of them breathtaking. He thought the lilac streaks in the hair that framed her face would probably look goofy on any other girl; on her, the effect was striking. She pinned him with those hypnotic violet eyes; he swallowed and said, "Hi, Rox."

"Hi, Marty. Seen my sister?"

"_Oh_, yeah," Chad said, looking at her like she was Thanksgiving dinner.

He watched her eyes darken to purple as they turned on Chad. _How does she do that?_ "Wasn't talking to _you_, pencil dick."

"I think she headed for commons, not two minutes ago." Charitably, he added, "Give him a break, Rox. He's brand new."

Chad gave her a cocky grin, looking her over shamelessly as she walked past; she looked up at him coolly. "Why should I? He won't be any different a month from now. I know the type." She glided off down the hall, with the two of them watching her the whole way.

"Sweet," Chad said. "_Very_ nice."

"Yeah. You could fall into those eyes and drown."

"I meant from _this_ side. You could crack walnuts on that ass."

_A full athletic scholarship, so he doesn't have to waste valuable practice time passing tests to stay in school._ "Roxanne Spaulding; don't ask me about the last names, they must have different fathers. Junior, astrophysics. No minor, no sports, but she's taking every dance elective the school offers."

"_Astrophysics_?"

"Apparently brains run in the family, too."

"Dance, huh? She on the squad?"

"The cheerleading squad? We don't have one." _Yet. Sorry, Chad. No stable of hotties already primed to date you._

"Too bad. See the way she was coming on to me? A chick gives a guy that much attitude, it means she's interested."

"Wouldn't bet your life. She's got a boyfriend who'll bend you till something snaps."

Chuck slapped a thigh-sized bicep. "That so?"

"Yeah. Eddie Chang, junior, materials science. Also rising star of the wrestling team; he'd be captain already, if he came to practice more often. Think Arnold Schwarzenegger, but a foot shorter. Also the alternate instructor for the karate class. About a month ago, a guy your size tried to pick a fight with him in front of Rox, showing off. I don't think the bandages are all off yet." Chad looked like the stubborn type; to give him an out, he added, "Besides, she's jailbait."

"Shittin me."

"Just turned seventeen. Told you she was smart."

"Okay," he said slowly, "what about the other sister?"

"Sarah? You'll probably bang your head again when you see her. But she's pretty much off limits too."

"What, she doesn't date either?"

"Not a lot, but some."

"Well? She doesn't date jocks, I suppose." He grinned. "Or _says_ she doesn't."

"She only dates girls, Chad."

"Oh. What a waste."

"Girls around here don't think so, not even the straight ones. They're glad she's not in competition. Junior, meteorological science, with a social science minor; weird combination. She does all the marches and rallies, from NOW to PETA."

"Why do you keep doing that?"

"Doing what?"

"Saying what people are studying, as if it was part of their _names_ or something."

"It's a common practice at MacArthur. It's what we're here for, after all." _Most of us, anyway; academic and engineering studies are what gave this school its reputation, and the quality of its education is how they justify the tuition. If they start dumping money into fancy locker rooms and a stadium and uniforms with special shoes for Astroturf… It's the beginning of the end for this place._ "What's _your_ major?"

"Haven't decided yet." He slammed his locker and turned away without a goodbye.

_Most of us had our fields picked out when we were freshmen in high school. Sounds like your major is NFL fantasies, Chad. I wonder if you had to take the same entrance exam the rest of us did, and, if so, how you passed it. _He shook his head. _Cheerleading tryouts are next week; all Rox has to do to get on the squad is show up. Please, God. Don't let her see the notice. Let her play hooky that day. Don't give this guy a shot at her. Let me keep my fantasies, that girls like Rox and Kat wouldn't date a shmuck like this if he was the last guy on earth._

-0-

"Jack, aren't you going out to work today?"

He untied her apron and set it on the counter. "One meet today, probably a long one; but it's local, and it won't start until at least three. Until then, we have the whole house to ourselves."

"Oho. Are you're sure you're ready, old man?" She reached up and put her hands on his shoulders. "After that encore performance last night?"

He pulled her shirt out of her slacks and slowly freed the lowest three buttons. "My doctor was most impressed with me yesterday; he seems to think I've discovered the fountain of youth." He slid his hand into her open shirt, pressing his hand against the smooth, warm skin at the small of her back. He bent and kissed the side of her neck. "Care to try something a little different?"

-0-

_Four for four, _he thought, totally spent. _If there's some secret here that I could package and sell, I'd be a billionaire. Oh, wait, I already am. Working for IO is like working for the Medellins, only the pay is better and you've got a badge to flash. _

"You know, this is the first time I've been under the sheets of my own bed." She snuggled closer, resting a hand on his chest, just over his heart. "The second week I was here, I lay down on it and closed my eyes for an hour, trying to figure out what sleep must feel like. Now, I lay clothes out on it sometimes, and change the sheets once a week." Her fingers described slow circles, combing through the damp hair on his chest. "I'm going to have to change them today, though, before the girls get home."

"Why? They don't come in here, do they?"

"No, but I've _got _to get all these pheromones out of the air and down the drain, or the girls will jump every time Bobby or Eddie walks into the same room."

"You can _smell _pheromones?"

"Well, I can detect them in the air, and I recognize them; just don't ask me to describe what they smell like. It would be like trying to describe a color in infrared, or the sound of microwaves."

"Or making love, to someone who's never done it."

"God, I was ridiculous about that. Just two nights ago …" Her hand stilled. "Jack, you know that first night, out on the couch? When I had your hand in my lap, and you asked me why I was smiling?"

"You said you might tell me later."

"Well, it's later. Right then, your pheromone count shot up. That was the first encouragement I had; it gave me enough confidence – barely – to explain my predicament, and ask you -" she slid her hand over his ribs and hugged him "- for _this._"

"The gods were smiling on us that night. Come to think of it, they're probably applauding right now." He tipped her head up and kissed her. Her tongue slipped past his, and she threw a leg across him. He pulled his head back slightly. "Um, need a _little _more recovery time than that, doll. How 'bout a shower? Care to scrub my back?" He looked at her with mock concern. "If we do anything else …You won't short out or anything, will you?"

She slapped his chest. "I take showers all the _time. _I don't perspire, but I get dirty just like everyone else." She sat up and whipped the sheet off the bed. "And just now, I've got sweat all _over_ me."

"I was just wondering about water … working its way inside."

"Jack," she said, taking his hand to pull him out of bed, "I'm wet inside _now_."

-0-

The drive to his meeting with Colby gave Lynch a little time to clear his head. He noted that he wasn't getting much work done at home lately. Then again, he admitted to himself, he hadn't been getting much done _before_ his housekeeper had 'redefined' their relationship; the grinding pressure had been seriously depressing him, reducing his effectiveness.

Endangering them all …

_Feel ready to fight dragons _now, _though, don't you? Just like the doctor said …_

-0-

"Well, Mister Lane – Jack - I've run every test that seems prudent, and examined you as thoroughly as I know how, given the… unusual circumstances; unless the tests come back with unexpected results, I'd have to say you're in phenomenal shape."

Lynch, sitting shirtless on the exam table, snorted. "For a man my age."

"For a man your age," Doctor Simmons agreed. He was young, probably just starting out, and eager to build his practice in a posh burg like La Jolla; one reason Anna had picked him, Lynch was sure. He was also thorough, which was another reason.

"For a man _half _your age, you're in merely _great _shape. Although, for a guy a third your age, you spike up to _excellent._ You wouldn't believe some of the doughy specimens who come in here for sports physicals." He touched the heavy crisscross pattern of scar tissue on Lynch's left side, across and below the ribs. "You look like a runner. Does this ever draw you up short?"

"Used to, when it was fresh. You learn to work around it."

"I'm sure. My dad's got one looks a lot like it; got it in a place called An Loc. They get all the shrapnel out?"

Lynch smiled. "I get a little extra attention at the airport sometimes."

"If you don't mind my asking, where'd you get them? Gulf?"

"First Gulf War," Lynch agreed, not quite lying.

"History's a mother, isn't it? The books all make out like you just rolled over them. Guess they didn't _all_ surrender as soon as they saw you."

"Not quite." _Certainly not the ones guarding those nuclear – tipped Hussein 3's. But _somebody _had to make sure those birds wouldn't fly, before the first Tomahawk left the launcher. IO lost a lot of good men on that one._ He felt a pang._ Almost half my team gone in an eyeblink: good men, good friends. Twenty percent casualties in the other seven X-teams, mostly in the even-numbered ones. That mystery team they sent in to disable the reactor got the job done, but they never made pickup; they must have died to a man..._

"So why not do something about them, Jack? I'm guessing you could afford it. The eye's a dead loss, but you could make the facial scars almost unnoticeable."

He shifted on the table. "Well, sometimes having people not be able to look you in the eye is an advantage in negotiations. Besides, my girlfriend claims to like them." The feel of her fingers tracing those furrows had been shocking at first; but her genuine fascination had given him a feeling of almost unbearable intimacy, as if he'd been naked to her in an entirely new way.

Simmons had been about to set Lynch's file down on the counter; instead, he reopened it and glanced at something, then he did set it down.

"New girlfriend?"

"Well, we've been friends for a couple years. Things have got a lot more serious just lately."

"Younger?"

"Yeah, quite a bit, actually." This was starting to get more uncomfortable than the prostate exam. "She looks to be mid-twenties; I've never asked."

"Jack, are you two sexually active?"

"'Active' doesn't _begin_ to describe it. Look, Doctor, I don't want to sound prudish, but are we still doing the doctor-patient thing, or are we just male bonding here?"

"I'm not trying to embarrass you. A lot of my male patients your age take up with younger women, believe me. Honesty's important between a doctor and his patient."

_And how much 'honesty' are you prepared for, Doctor? Which totally true statement would send you to the phone faster: 'actually, she's not quite ten, but she's VERY mature for her age'; or 'actually, Doc, I'm screwing my robot housekeeper'?_

"I think you just explained a mystery." He tapped Jack's file. "This file describes a man fighting a losing battle against the pressures of his job. Stress, fatigue, incipient alcoholism – it's all in there. I see a lot of it, practicing in a community like this: guys in entrepreneurial or upper management positions, who can't take a day off, don't sleep, and get hammered on expensive scotch before bedtime. They forget how to take care of themselves, avoid their families, and live for the job; it eats them up."

"Doc, are you sure that file's current? I haven't had a thorough physical in a while."

"Almost three years, according to what you sent me. But you _have _had regular consults and an array of blood and urine tests performed by a…" he looked at the chart again. "Dr. Rosie, is it?"

"Yeah." _Girl, you've got a wicked sense of humor. I'd spank you, but I'd only hurt my hand._

"So I was expecting a wreck on his way to cirrhosis or a heart attack. Instead, you come in looking like a drill instructor, clear-eyed, erect, and energetic. Liver enzymes are still a bit off, but I'll bet you haven't tied one on in quite a while. Am I right?"

"Does four to six weeks count as 'quite a while'?"

"It does. So, tell me: how long ago did this 'friendship' start to turn serious?"

_Do we count back from the time she started giving me massage, keeping the glass out of my hand at night, getting me comfortable with the feel of her hands? I guess we do. How long has she been planning this?_

"About the same. Is that the connection you're looking for?"

"Yes. Happy, stable marriages – or love affairs - are a _huge _ameliorating factor for men with stressful lifestyles; statistically speaking, a well-loved man is healthier, longer-lived, more stable and more effective. There are volumes of medical research on the subject."

"_There are libraries on the subject. There are decades of research by professionals all over the world, mountains of data." You weren't just trying to learn _how, _Anna. You were looking for a way to keep me from coming apart at the seams._

"So hang on to that girl, Jack. What she's doing for you is going a long way towards keeping you alive."

-0-

_So why didn't you confront her? _Lynch asked himself, as his car wound along surface streets towards his destination. _When you got home last night, that would have been a perfect time, wouldn't it? At least, until you carried her to your bedroom._

_Because, when you're with her, you can't believe she's not being one hundred percent real with you; it's only when you can't see her or touch her that you start thinking that maybe … maybe bedwarming is just one more feature offered by Anna the Full Service Automated Domestic Companion._

"We're going to have to talk," he said, to no one in particular. "And then, I may have to spank her. Or something."


End file.
